Plex HTPC Ver: 1.6.1.2648-bd69a281 (Oct, 12?, 2021
Plex for Windows Ver: 1.35.1.2632-c6783c78 (Sept 17,2021)
Plex Media Player (for Windows Home Theater PCs) Ver: 2.58.0.1076-38e019da (May 19, 2020)
…and the only one that handles video decode without instantly pegging my laptop GPU @ 100% (with HWDecode on/off) and causing very bad stutter and/or low frame rate is the oldest & discontinued of the 3[see pics below]. I would prefer to use Plex For Windows but this decode issue has rendered it useless for me.
Confirmed all 3 are direct playing, test video was H265 4k 26Mbps but the issue happens with multiple videos at 1080 & 2160 H264/265. Playing device is an laptop with Ryzen 7 5700U & 16GB of RAM
Why is the old app better at video decode ???
There’s no issue with the server and I’ve never had an issue with it updating, why do you say to turn off server updates?
As for PMP I’m almost certain it’s discontinued so it won’t get updated anyway. I will continue to use it as it’s the only Win app that provides smooth 4k playback on my laptop unless they fix one of the other apps. I don’t like PMP as it’s more of a media centre app and sucks to use with a point & click interface, Plex for Windows is the best interface to use on a PC but until it’s not eating my gpu I can’t switch to it.
Found an H.265 file that was also maxing out gpu usage (95-100% 3D & 23% on Video Codec 0) in Plex Media Player so I put the file on a flash drive and played it with VLC and the gpu usage was only 12% (12% 3D & 15% Video Codec 0)
Whats the deal with Plex’s windows players being so inefficient?
When this happens, you might want to look at the server dashboard to see what bitrate was negotiated between client and server. I recently discovered that Plex For Windows was using 10 Gbps (yes, 10 Gbps) when watching live tv (I have Live TV/DVR). Playback was extremely jerky with client processing all that data. Problem was corrected if I selected a sane bitrate.
Obviously, Live TV is very different from watching a video. But maybe something similarly stupid is going on between the client and server.
Agree with your statements in regards to UI and same situation here. Running Intel iGPU i5-9600k (Intel UHD 630) and Plex for Windows pegs GPU 3D utilization at 100% for 1080p 60fps content, and 4k is unwatchable (version 1.33, 1.40). PMP (version 2.58) and Windows MPV player (0.33) work flawlessly. Both instances use D3D11VA for playback.
same, on my older computer, plex for windows is unusable due to UI lag during playback, only old school pmp works, and im not using plex htpc because i need the mouse and keyboard optimized UI
I had no decoding problems with Plex HTPC on my old i5 + GT1030. But I just got a NUC11 with an 11th gen i7 with internal Iris Xe graphics running Windows 11 connected to a Yamaha TSR700 and an LG C1 4k OLED tv and Plex HTPC is completely unusable. Not only is the CPU and GPU usage extremely high, it also has trouble with bitstream audio (playing certain files from beginning won’t work, but resuming from the middle does) and trouble with refresh rate mode switching (sometimes the screen goes black sand stays that way). Very frustrating. Decided to try PMP and everything is working so much better - Very low CPU and GPU usage. Audio and refresh rate switch works well. So frustrating.
